Google's trying to DRM the internet, and we have to make sure they fail

https://programming.dev/post/865990

Google's trying to DRM the internet, and we have to make sure they fail - programming.dev

In every comment thread about the importance of supporting Firefox, there’s always at least one comment claiming Firefox is slow, even while I repeatedly see the data say otherwise.

Anecdotally, I’ve used Firefox, Waterfox, and Librewolf on PC, and none have been slow.

I’ve used Firefox, Firefox Beta, and Fennec on Android, and if anything they seem faster and easier to use than Chrome (and they actually tend to work like an actual internet browser).

I’m not saying these commenters are all Google sockpuppets, but maybe they’re parroting misinformation, or maybe they’re using an Apple OS, where Firefox is basically Safari.

It’s just really perplexing to me.

I think it depends on the website. There are some websites where chrome will work better either because chrome works better with certain libraries/technologies or because the developers put more time into optimizing for chrome.

On the other hand firefox might have less bloat around telemetry that gives it an advantage too.

Oh absolutely true, and one would probably notice it more if one uses a lot of Google’s services (though Microsoft is even worse in my experience, with nerfing its services if you don’t use Edge), but this still doesn’t explain why just a normal user would proclaim Firefox is “slow as fuck” without anything to support this, and that’s what I’m seeing in nearly every thread that mentions Firefox.
because that’s google bot replying

because being faster is what got chrome it's market share in the first place even though it hasn't been true for a very long time if it ever was.

I never switched to chrome because my 50tb of ram wasn't enough to open 2 tabs.

If you want to online shop or research something to buy, or spend money in some way, Chrome and Google search is superior. If you are looking for information, news, anything not requiring payment, Firehox and duck duck go are the best

I’m going to have to strongly disagree here. Trying to research a potential purchase on Google or Bing will net you page after page of Amazaon Affiliate sites peddling junk. I’m into longboarding, and most of the results you’ll find trying to Google a decent longboard would result in wasting your money at best, severe injury or death at worst.

It’s not just longboards, either. I’ve noticed these promoted results trying to search PC parts, appliances, dog food, tools, and anything else you might be looking to buy.

There’s a reason people started appending searches with “reddit,” but honestly it’s better just to use a search engine that doesn’t net you these results, or ask somewhere else entirely like a community forum. Sadly, most people rely on results from search engines and will end up spending money on junk.

I’m also not sure why using Chrome would make online shopping easier. I literally make all my online purchases through either Firefox proper or Fennec, and I’ve never had a problem.

Yeah I’ve noticed the same thing. I’ve been deliberately trying to do a bit of Firefox advocacy for a while (cos I honestly believe increasing its userbase is our only chance to avoid google ruining the internet). But yes every time there’s a bunch of people confidently complaining about how bad/slow Firefox is and advocating for brave or chrome.

Initially I thought it was just a bit of historical baggage but it happens very consistently and aggressively so I’ve had the same thought.

Meanwhile, I’ve been using Firefox for ages and have never experienced the problems these people keep complaining about.

There was a brief time when Chrome ran better than Firefox on an old 512MB laptop I had, but Chrome has since become an infamous RAM hog. Firefox is the lightweight one now, and has been for quite a few years.

Worth mentioning that, as much as it pains me, Safari is also a good alternative for those it's available for (at least in this regard). And WebKit is a pretty badass project.
Chromium and its forks actually all use WebKit as well: https://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/displaying-a-web-page-in-chrome/
How Chromium Displays Web Pages

Is this up to date? I thought they forked from WebKit ten years ago.
Blink and WebKit completely diverged in 2013 after the fork. That document is virtually identical to its 2012 version and is marked as outdated in several places.
How Chromium Displays Web Pages - The Chromium Projects

Home of the Chromium Open Source Project

Oh huh, TIL. I had always assumed they were all webkit just due to the amount of compatibility code I've had to implement in CSS with -webkit styles. It makes sense that a fork like Blink would be backwards compatible with those though
I think some people also just haven’t used Firefox in a while, and it’s gotten better since the last time they used it. I’ve never had issues on Firefox, however I only became a Firefox user a few years ago. Meanwhile my girlfriend insists it’s buggy and slow, but she hasn’t used it in many years.

I’ve noticed a lot of people not wanting to ever revisit older paradigms. Like when the Reddit protests started a lot of people were adament that going back to forum type software would be a disaster and I felt taken aback. I loved that shit. The only reason I saw to do that with Reddit instead of a dedicated forum was because Reddit already had users that could wander into your community and slowly onramp. Here on the fediverse we get the best of both worlds, but there are people who hate the idea that [email protected] and [email protected] don’t aggregate together even though they might actually be about completely different subject matter because “we don’t want to go back to the phpbb days”

Well y know what? Maybe there are parts of the phpbb days that were worthwhile and good. Maybe hosting dedicated servers that are specifically about something is a positive thing as it makes there be more people excited to host a small part of the internet that people can make use of. Maybe what we needed was the easier on ramping, not the centralizes forums.

Maybe that’s like, just your opinion man.
I have suspected for a while it is astroturfing. Same as with GIMP and Libre Office where inevitably someone will trash the UI as it’s “soooo bad”. If you say a lie, and repeat it enough, people start to believe it.
I love GIMP’s UI. It’s clean, it’s to the point, and it’s stayed basically the same for ages!
Damn, this positivity isn’t welcome in free software circles! How can I respect you? (Kidding, I think you and your positivity is awesome.)

Every time I introduce someone to LibreOffice I half expect them to hate it, and that I'll have to go through the alternative interfaces and try to make them accept it and potentially install OnlyOffice instead if that doesn't help.

Instead, I'm generally met with an "oh, this is nice", before they start typing away.

I get that some of the bigger nerds would prefer something different (I would personally love the power of LibreOffice inside a modern minimalist GTK app), but LibreOffice is working great for most users. Those passionate enough to object to it probably prefer markdown or latex anyway.

I’ve only introduced LibreOffice to one person in recent memory, and her reaction was basically, “This is free?! I wish I knew about this years ago.”

I honestly prefer LibreOffice to what Microsoft Office has become.

When I went to grad school, I was told MS Office was required, so I purchased it, but turned out we just used basic word processing and a handful of simple presentations, so I ended up using LibreOffice for everything instead.

Same here. I found the Microsoft ribbon they introduced in 2007 to be a major anti pattern. It didn’t make things easier, it made things way harder. Our IT department tried to bust me for not using the official Microsoft software (outlook, excel, word, etc) so I outright uninstalled windows and put fedora on there. Granted, I was trying to do partitions and fucked it up, but whatever. The point is I wanted to get away from their “antivirus” spyware so I could use what worked for me. I got the idea when I saw the Dean of academics was using i3 as her window manager
I can just imagine your IT dept. running into the Dean’s office to complain, only to be met with yet more Linux. Hilarious!
“Oh God our eyes. The non proprietary software we didn’t buy licenses for. It burns!”

I’m a huge fan of open source but saying the only people saying Gimps UI is bad are astroturfing is insane.

It’s famously controversial and uses UI paradigms that don’t exist in any modern desktop environments.

I’m not, but it’s not like it’s an occasional thing. Every time it’s brought up, it’s trashed. Free software that does a better job than anything else free, and folk bash it. Either they like and are motivated by Adobe dominance, or they’re useful idiots.

We don’t need to praise the software specifically because it’s Open Source. We need good Open source Software of which there are plenty of great examples.

Blender, Krita, Libre Office, Audacity. These are great. Better than the paid competitors in a lot for ways.

Gimp and scribus are simply not. That should mean we start developing good FOSS software to fill that gap, as a collective.

Tenacity, not audacity. Audacity got took over by a company with questionable record and tried to add telemetry into it. Tenacity was the OS fork which stayed true to principles.

GIMP may not be your bag, but it’s highly used and many find it has much higher quality features than the alternatives. UI may not be popular, but it doesn’t prevent it being a solid bit of open source software.

Btw, what steps have you taken to improve open source graphics software? It’s easy to bash, it’s harder to learn and contribute.

Open source contributors > open source advocates > grateful open source users > almost everyone else > open source critics

One doesn't need to be a dev to have opinions about ease of use of a piece of software, don't be dense.

That is true, but to get free software made by people in their free time and say “this is rubbish” is a little ungrateful.

“Here, have this free food…”. " ewww gross, that is so bad".

All I’m saying is that there is tons of open source software that isn’t crap. Gimp has no excuse it should be as good as the others.

Considering I know many artists that use it as first choice, I know you’re wrong.

It’s good software, you just don’t like it.

Well, I guess your anecdotal evidence is as good as mine, because nobody in my design circle will touch the damn thing. Meanwhile Blender is the standard for 3d designers I know.

Blender is for models, not art. It’s different software. It’s great at what it does. Expecting that because one open source project can beat proprietary then all can is a pretty shallow view. A project relies on volunteers, sacrifice and funding.

You’re saying it’s bad because no one you know uses it doesn’t suggest no-one uses it, just you don’t know the users of it. Maybe your circle is as open minded to software as you are. Similar people surround themselves with each other. It says more about you than the software.

You can die on this hill if you want to. Gimp has its reputation amongst the public, and it's not for it's user friendly UI. Maybe you like the jank, but that doesn't mean it's optimal.

Also, another thing open source projects need is feedback from the public. The UI being horrid is feedback, and just because you feel the need to white knight and feel personally offended by this feedback doesnt make the feedback invalid. You can complain about the phrasing used, but if you use that as reason to disregard the feedback or get defensive and accusatory towards the person (the "what have YOU done" bit was particularly irrelevant) then you're part of the problem regardless how much you feel you're the solution.

Most of the public don’t know GIMP, the ones that do see the way it’s communicated from the community.

You say I can die on this hill. I said 2 things in the post you responded 2.

  • Blender is great software
  • That people use GIMP.
  • You’re debating against me, so what did I say that is wrong in that post? Are you saying Blender isn’t great, or are you saying zero people use GIMP?

    If you agree with both the sentiments I said, you either responded to the wrong message, or your arguing with me and not the points I made.

    I never disregarded the points about the UI. The UI could do with improvements. UI doesn’t improve by people blasting a piece of software on the internet, it comes by giving your time to help improve it, or forking it, or donating to someone that can. If you’re not doing any of those things, you’re not actually helping to address the problem. It’s not constructive criticism or helpful. It’s just putting yourself on a sandbox as if your opinions mean more about the software than the people who take time to make it and improve it.

    Buddy, I breath open source.

    Linux on every rig, third parry clients for every service. K9 mail, graphene OS, Linux.

    Every damn app and program outside of my banking is open source. I love open source. Gimp just simply sucks ass. Its why Gimp offends me so much. Its the one weak spot in my entire open source life.

    Finally a voice of reason. I'm in the same boat. Linux everything, including any standalone products I can load it onto. I can count on one hand the number of non-linux programs I use. GIMP's interface simply sucks. They know that, they've been given feedback since 1995, they just don't care. @CrypticCoffee is in here acting like GIMP just needs some support from the community but the reality is that they've neglected decades of feedback and so they deserve what they get. If that's negative feedback, then so be it!

    Blender's UI used to be a dumpsterfire too, right on part with GIMP in my opinion. They straight up redesigned that shit from the ground up and now it's an amazing and intuitive powerhouse program, and they're 7 years younger!

    The fact that GIMP is 2d and blender is 3d works in gimp's favor if anything. 2D is a whole lot simpler, and blender goes into animation, mixing, audio, dozens of specialities.

    TL;DR, GIMP has had decades to improve, they don't, and they deserve to reap what they sow, both positive and negative.

    gimp.org/…/support-gimp-developers-sustainable-de…

    GIMP getting around $2k dollars a month or a bit more:

    fund.blender.org

    138,000 euro MONTLY contribution.

    A wee bit of a difference in funding. There are alternatives to GIMP, not really as much for Blender. They cannot be compared. GIMP probably couldn’t afford a UI developer if they tried. You’re looking at least £3k pcm for someone who isn’t punishing themselves.

    Do you want to tell me what sort of voodoo magic GIMP do to match the resources Blender get? Your opinions are based in feelings, not reality. You may hate GIMP, you may hate the UI, you may want the project to fail and take that mission as keyboard crusader, but it’s unfortunately just not a realistic position, but hey, your feelings can be unrealistic if they want to be. You can feel what you want.

    GIMP - Funding GIMP developers for sustainable development

    GIMP is developed by its community - support the humans behind

    Krita gets ~4000 euros a month and their ui is beautiful, functional, streamlined, and dare I say on par with much, much larger offerings. Until recently Zbrush was a 1-time license purchase for years and years. Their software is incredibly powerful and their UI is well organized and feature rich, and their entire net worth is like $100k total...

    I'm going to let you argue with the wall, because you'd rather talk feelings than make a coherent argument.

    It’s a different tool. Krita is for painting. GIMP is for image manipulation.

    I’m assuming you’re not a professional programmer though, as professional programmer salaries are much higher. If Krita does more, it’s though sacrificing time, giving it away free. Not everyone is in a position to do that. You either pay for good developers, or hope for the sacrifice.

    Maybe I’ll try your approach and just bash projects, I’m sure that’s productive and helps open source improve. Feels a wee bit negative though…

    blah blah blah blah blah
    Weak, you cannot debate any of my points, so you’re going for the ad hominem. Ironic that you call me out for logical fallacies…

    I'd agree with your points, but there's no point in us both being wrong.

    You're not interested in debate or discussion. You're a dedicated white knight for gimp and all it's jank, and you've no interest in engaging with the points made by others. Your best counterarguments are to either attack the person you disagree with directly, or what boils down to a "nuh uh because it works for me!".

    If you want to actually discuss this do it in good faith or stop wasting our time.

    Also talking about GIMP, plenty of people have said "there's heaps of Photoshop alternatives" yet legit everything on Ubuntu I've has been buggy AF and feature poor. Like I get that FOSS software is hit and miss but this has been really rough

    Woah, hold on now. Gimp actually is unusablly bad. I say this as Linux Graphic Designer who would rather use Krita (anillustration software) to do photo edits.

    Libre Office is great tho.

    I’m involved in open source software, and of the artists I’m aware of, most use GIMP, not Krita, because it has better features. Krita is a great option, but it doesn’t quite have the same features for producing quality art.

    “Other people who have bad experience ces with something just be asteoturfing.”

    Ivw consistently had an issue with Firefox that I described in a thread a few days ago that I can’t seem to identify or fix. Am I just not allowed to mention it?

    Maybe their issue tracker is the best bet, or in a separate question thread about the issues. Raising it in every thread it comes up when people recommending it isn’t going to solve the issue or help anything, is it?

    No, it won’t. I bring it up in this particular thread for 2 reasons.

  • I don’t like the insinuation that anyone who claims to have problems with Firefox must be bots. I don’t think that’s at all true, since I’ve run into multiple problems with the browser myself that I haven’t been able to solve.

  • I brought it up in the previous thread because I think that if people are considering switching, knowing what problems exist is useful. It isn’t meant to dissuade anyone, in fact I regularly recommend Firefox to my friends and family. But I don’t personally use it because of a pretty major problem, and I don’t think it’s bad to mention it when the topic comes up.

  • “I don’t like the insinuation that anyone who claims to have problems with Firefox must be bots.”

    I did not say this, multiple people have interpreted it this way. I said there is a targetted campaign against it where every time it is brought up it is trashed. You may be be a genuine person who is also trashing it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t also a targetted campaign at play. I just find it hard to believe that some folk hate FOSS projects so much they have to smash it every time it’s brought up. Sounds exhausting.

    There is a difference between “it’s great software, but i’ve notice a few issues” and “this project is trash”. The second is posted purely with the intent of trying to dissuade people from using it, and all they do is keep people using Chrome, which I think we can all agree has bigger issues.

    Firefox is not “basically Safari” on macOS, that is only true on mobile.
    People seem to be unaware that Firefox on Android (not IOS unfortunately) has support for several useful extensions. Ad blocking is the obvious benefit, but I use a Text-to-speech extension every day.
    Firefox for iOS might switch to their own engine if Apple relaxes the rules on web browsers. New EU laws will put full pressure on Big Tech.
    I think Apple will have to, since they’re also going to have to allow sideloading. However, knowing Apple, they’ll probably wait right up until the deadline the EU has set before actually giving us what we want.
    I did not know this, so thanks for the correction

    This was true when Chrome first came up, they even made those ridiculous ads, which Opera (before they stopped developing their own engine) was ridiculing: https://youtu.be/ZdirsXNaibo

    Firefox after they they rewrote their engine to be multithreaded (I think it was called project electron?) is faster than chrome that is currently very bloated.

    What saddens me the most that, while there are ignorant people who don't know better and use what are they familiar with, there are also self proclaimed techno geeks, who are equally ignorant and don't seem to remember the times of Internet Explorer.

    Opera vs Potatoes

    Opera web browser speed test. They are really silly :)if you wanna download test that web browser please visit thehttp://www.opera.com

    YouTube
    Tbf we’re in a new generation of techno geeks who weren’t around for a lot of things and lack the full context. I think about that every time a young person chides me for “stealing” from YouTubers or even Google itself by blocking ads.